Casper
Released in theaters on May 26, 1995
Released on Netflix on October 1, 2023
Runtime: 1 Hour 40 Minutes
Rated PG
James Harvey moves into Whipstaff manor with his daughter Kat to help expunge some pesky poltergeists, but to his surprise these ghosts are real! Kat befriends Casper the friendly ghost and James tries to perform crossover therapy with Casper’s obnoxious, fleshless uncles: Stretch, Stinky, and Fatso. Little do Kat and James know that Whipstaff is home to more than just spooks and specters. When a treasure map is found the owner of the estate wants more than just a ghost free home, she wants all the secrets the manor holds and she is willing to go any length to get them!
Themes:
Family, bullies, ghosts, crossing over, counseling/therapy, unfinished business, acceptance, fitting in, love, loss, death, haunted houses, what happens after you die, middle school, Halloween, parties, having a crush, single parenting, and father daughter relationships,
Language:
I caught d-mn twice, bit-h twice, ‘what the hell’ twice, and several religious exclamations (Christ, God, etc.). The word crap is used once and one of the ghosts says, “this sucks” when getting sucked into a vacuum cleaner. Piss off is also said once. There is also some innuendo which is discussed in the next section.
Stuff to be aware of:
Here is the scary stuff (most of this is for gags): a priest gets his head turned around backwards (he is still alive and walks away), the crypt keeper can be seen in a mirror doing the Home Alone scream, and the ghosts create a tornado to scare people. Casper’s uncles are pretty mean to him. IN one scene they kick him and in another shoot him into the sky.
There is smoking and one scene takes place in a bar with the dad and three ghosts drinking. The dad is drunk and one man is passed out in the background. Happy Hour is mentioned and “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” is sang. There are several sexual/innuendo references. When the dad loses his pants he is seen in his boxers. One ghost says, “You're no Marky Mark.” When the three ghost uncles are all inside the vacuum cleaner one asks, “who’s got their pointy head…” and another one cuts him off with, “That’s not my head.” Kat lays on Casper’s bed and he remarks, “There is a girl on my bed, YES!”
A few other things to note are that Casper recalls his death (which is very tragic and sad), there is a scene where the two villains try to kill one another, one ghost crosses over with light shooting out of her which causes her to explode, and one person falls off a cliff and dies.
Overall:
This movie came out when I was in middle school and I loved it. I had some of the Pizza Hut puppets and a few of the toys. Rewatching it as an adult I still have a lot of nostalgia for it. The story itself probably isn’t as great as it was to me as a kid, but I still love this movie a lot. I wish the studio would touch it up a bit. We have the DVD and watching it on Netflix is about the same quality. This is a classic Halloween family movie. My kids have seen it.
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